Young Trans Man, Matthew Spampinato, Killed in Hit-and-Run
Above: Matthew Angelo Spampinato with his cousin Morgan Hanners's daughter, AthenaMatthew Angelo Spampinato, a 21-year-old transgender man, was killed in a hit-and-run car crash February 9 in New Castle, Del., making him the sixth trans person known to have died by violence in the U.S.
this year.Spampinato was walking home from work at a Starbucks when he was killed, the Delaware News Journal reports. He was hit along the shoulder of Route 273.
Police have yet to identify the driver.Spampinato grew up in Georgia, in an area about an hour from Atlanta, and moved to Delaware last year.
He began working as a barista at a new Starbucks in late 2021, and he was liked and respected by his coworkers and customers.“He was always so selfless,” colleague Samantha Strothmann told the News Journal. “He would always ask how everybody was doing even when he wasn’t having a good day himself.” Customers described him as “a breath of fresh air” and someone with “a smile that could turn a day around,” the paper reports.Spampinato had known he was trans since he was 13, according to his social media posts.
